


Amacita

by quassia



Series: Coda [4]
Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quassia/pseuds/quassia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“D’you think we were friends before?” Between Souda and Owari, Kuzuryuu has a hard time telling who's worse at dealing with emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amacita

**Author's Note:**

> a short little thing :> think of this as set before "resolve", or you can read it as stand alone!

“Do you think we were friends before?”

There are great jags in Souda’s memory. It’s like—having a bunch of parts to start work on the project. Except, instead of the machine screws you need, you have wood screws. What’s worse, they’re all damaged and splintered. Instead of caps or heavy hex nuts, you have slotted, castle, and what are you even supposed to do with these bits that don’t fit? You can only make sense of something something if you have the right parts.

He’s missing a lot of parts, in his memory. He remembers the despair, though. Before that? It gets hazy.

Kuzuryuu glances up at him, caught with his tongue on his thumb, a book in his lap. It’s a manual—at Souda’s request, he came to help him out today. Souda’s crouched, sleeves bunched up around his elbows, grease smearing his skin.

After a long few moments, Kuzuryuu shrugs.

“Probably not,” is his unsatisfying answer. On seeing Souda’s expression, he scrunches up his brows and clicks his tongue. “What? If we were friends, do you really think we would’ve fallen into despair? –tch, well, actually…”

“Oi,” Souda splutters, indignant and offended and flicks a nut at him. Kuzuryuu swats it away with the back of his hand, thin smirk curving the corner of his lips. But the smirk vanishes and he looks back down at the manual. “I was bein’ _serious_!”

“What? So was I. Maybe we met sometime, and you pissed me off somehow…”

Souda’s glowering. This isn’t how he wanted the conversation to go. He wasn’t expecting a simple _oh yeah, definitely_ from Kuzuryuu or anything, but he had hoped for a slightly better answer.

“…or maybe I saw you fix something around the school and— You listening to me, Souda?”

“I’m listenin’,” Souda’s grumbling and tapping his wrench against the floor. He hears Kuzuryuu’s gusty sigh and then the click of his shoes on the floor. When he glances back, Kuzuryuu hasn’t stood from the chair he’s in but he’s shifted positions, knees wide and both feet planted on the floor. His one eye is watching Souda. He sits just like a yakuza would, Souda thinks, his back curved, leaned forward in a position that would be more threatening if Kuzuryuu was taller. As it is, it just makes him look more intense.

“Does it matter even if we did know each other somehow?” Kuzuryuu asks him.

“No.” Souda turns away. Tap tap. He looks down at his wrench, thumbing at the metal. A long, doubtful silence before he adds mulishly, “A little.”

Kuzuryuu rolls his eye up toward the ceiling. It’s Souda-speak for ‘it’s bothering me a lot’. It’s one of the many things he’s learned since he started spending more time with him. Honestly, him and Owari. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to tell you which of them had more difficulty with communicating or even thinking about emotions properly. When did he go and become one of the emotional-savvy ones in this group?

“We’re friends now,” he tells him, because he honestly doesn’t know what Souda is hoping to hear.

Souda’s back looks dissatisfied, however, as much as a back can. He’s hunched slightly forward and he’s not looking back at Kuzuryuu. That’s as good as saying ‘so what?’ Were he the same Kuzuryuu he used to be, here’s where he’d get annoyed, impatient, tell Souda to spit it out.

“What, you not happy with that?” his voice still sounds impatient, though he doesn’t mean it to be. Oh well. Kuzuryuu’s lips thin, his eyebrows drawing down. ‘Friendship’ has always been a tenuous thing for him. He never allowed himself to seek it out, never allowed anyone close. _These idiots_ changed all of that. Starting with Hinata and, to his _great_ surprise, Owari, Souda and Sonia. Those of them who had been left to wake up.

“It ain’t like that,” Souda says, quickly, as if sensing the beginning of an argument. “But, you know. You got Pekoyama, right? You’ve known her since you guys were kids. She’s more important to you than anyone ‘cause of that…?”

Kuzuryuu’s speechless for a moment. His hands clench around the manual (closed now) in his lap. It doesn’t hurt as much to talk about Peko. Hell, he and Souda have talked about her before. But, this is a whole new avenue of conversation with her involved.

Still baffled, he just sputters out, “Well, yeah, of course Peko’s important to me.”

“That’s nice,” Souda starts, awkwardly, “that connection. Mine never—I thought I had one person like that, once, but then it turned out I didn’t.”

Kuzuryuu’s sagged back in his chair.

_Is that it?_

“Idiot.” Kuzuryuu drags his hand over his head. “Just because you haven’t known me since I was a brat doesn’t mean our friendship is any less important to me.”

Souda’s gone rigid. _Bulls-eye._ Kuzuryuu can practically see the target that he just shot through the centre, there in blazing bright insecurity on his back. The way Souda whips around to look at him with narrow dark eyes through his glasses is just further proof of that, the way his fingers keep fidgeting with his tools. He’s got too many tells. Kuzuryuu cocks an eyebrow at him, as if daring an argument to come out of that mouth that’s opening and closing comically.

“Bullshit.” The mechanic had quailed for a moment but he’d pushed that one word out. It didn’t sound as forceful as he meant for it to. “If you had to choose between saving me or Pekoyama—”

Souda yelps then, falling sideways as the manual _whaps_ into his head.

Kuzuryuu’s stood from his chair, its loud clatter as it falls to the floor filling the room, and crosses the small bit of space between them. His face has gone dark and when he crouches down in front of where Souda is scrambling, pushing himself backward with his feet, there’s a telling roll to his _r_ s and Souda recalls that _right, yakuza_. “What the fuck are you talking about, asshole? You wanna piss me off, huh?”

Souda doesn’t say anything. There’s a hot prickling in his throat, behind his eyes that’s going to lead to watering in just a minute, and he _knows_ that it’s guilt because he’s fucked up and said the wrong thing. It happens a lot. Though he has friends, comrades, those he can trust, his insecurity still gets the better of him.

“Oi. Listen up, Souda.”

Reluctantly, he looks at Kuzuryuu, poised with one of his fingers pointing at Souda’s face.

“You can’t put friendship on a scale.” Kuzuryuu reaches out and _whaps_ him in the forehead next and Souda thinks about saying something about hitting guys with glasses. “What about you, huh? If me and Hinata were about to die, which of us would you save? Can you make that kinda decision?”

Souda hunches up his shoulders and answers _“no”_ immediately, though in a small voice.

That alone is enough to cool Kuzuryuu down. He sighs, slumping where he’s crouched, his arm leaning against his knees. “Stop worrying about how important you are to others. We’re not gonna abandon you for other people. _I’m_ not.” A pause and his mouth twists. “We’re not like any of the shitty other friends you’ve had.”

“Yeah, I never woulda had a yakuza friend before. When I was still in my right mind,” Souda retorts. It’s as good as saying _I’m okay now_.

Kuzuryuu pushes himself to his feet, knocks off Souda’s hat, and tousles his dark hair, getting a glare and a swat. Then he scoops up the manual in his hand and finds his chair again, falling into it heavily, legs spread comfortably as he flicks through the pages to find the one where he left off. Souda’s sorting himself back into order, fixing his hat, pulling his tools back to him.

“Don’t make me tell you that you’re important to me again,” Kuzuryuu huffs.

Souda’s cheeks turn a little pink and he doesn’t answer, turning back to the pod where Pekoyama is sleeping even now, laying his fingers against the glass cover.


End file.
